February 25, 2013

We
all know the adage about an ounce of prevention being worth a pound of
cure, and in the case of air quality in schools, it may be even more
than that. Dave Blake and Rich Prill, two Indoor Environmental Quality
experts based in the Pacific Northwest, focus on ensuring schools have
the tools they need to put that idea into action by ensuring that
schools are safe and sustainable, with air free of contaminants and
irritants.

Students
miss about 12.8 million school days annually because of asthma and
asthma-related issues, adding another layer of importance to the already
vital need for clean air and proper ventilation in schools.

Blake,
of the Northwest Clean Air Agency over in Mt. Vernon, Wash., and Prill,
a Building Science and IEQ Specialist based in Spokane, Wash., will be
leading an “Indoor Air Quality Walkthrough” Webinar
on February 26 at 1:30 p.m. EST, part of the Environmental Protection
Agency’s “Tools for Schools” educational webinar series. Prill and Blake
have visited more than 1,000 schools, investigating indoor
environmental issues, doing workshops and skill training and have
presented their walkthrough at the EPA’s Tools for Schools symposium.

“Kids
are required to go to school for the most part, but schools aren’t
required to do much in terms of the indoor environment,” Prill says of
the importance of this work. “There’s not much in the way of
school-appropriate standards or guidelines. Schools aren’t industrial
workplaces.”

On
a typical day, the team will take their instruments, including CO2
particle counters, light meters, moisture meters and temperature meters,
and will tour a school and monitor air quality. What gets monitored
gets controlled, and they loan equipment to schools for further
monitoring if need be with the intent that schools will eventually get
their own. When monitoring, they look to make sure a school meets
standards in these five areas:

Staff
training comprises a major part of Blake and Prill’s program. “We don’t
want people to think the worst,” he says. “We want to let them know
we’re there for education and skills training and to talk about the
building inside and out.”

He
says he does not want staff members at a school to feel as though the
program is designed to tell people how they fall short or to regulate
them. Commending staff members on positive practices and reinforcing
pride in their work is an important element, as is providing a wealth of
resources to share with the staff. Transparency is important, too --
measurements are shared at the end of the day so that everyone is on the
same page.

Prill
says the program has been successful so far. The majority of schools
they visit end up adopting some kind of indoor environmental program
instead of just operating the school on breakdown maintenance, or only
dealing with equipment when there is a serious issue. With the focus on
education and tight budgets, facility maintenance can get put on the
backburner, and with limited resources, facilities are often only dealt
with when something goes wrong.

“We
don’t do breakdown maintenance with humans,” he says. “You don’t want
to wait for people to have problems, so you do prevention.”

He
attributes the success of the program to helping teachers, school
administrators and facilities teams understand their buildings, adopt
some prevention policies and guidelines, and guide on-site assessment.

Prill
says he recommends the webinar to anyone working or regularly in
contact with a school, including parents, teachers, administrators,
facility managers, building operators and head custodians.

“Everybody
needs to be on board,” Prill says. “We see teachers bringing in
chemicals, air fresheners, furry animals in the rooms, teachers that
turn off the ventilation system. We need everyone in a school community
to be on board, especially with understanding asthma and
sensitivities.”

He
says it’s important for everyone to know the parameters and standards
for good air quality in a school to protect student health and to be
aware when something is not right, so it can be fixed right away. A
united front and awareness are the keys to prevention, which not only
has health and environmental advantages, but will also financially
benefit tight school budgets in the long run, as fixing equipment or
major ventilation problems will prove more costly in the end.

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